Monday 29 October 2012

WBC, Thomas Dulorme and the messed up Welterweight Rankings

Last weekend every one watching HBO's "Boxing After Dark" saw the highly touted Thomas Dulorme (16-1, 12) defeated by crude but hard hitting Argentinian Luis Carlos Abregu (34-1, 28). As everyone who saw that fight will attest it was just a loss for Dulorme, but a really painful lesson with the Puerto Rican youngster getting dropped several times as well as being rocked and hurt time and time again.

What may however be the most surprisingly thing about that fight however wasn't the outcome but the fact Dulorme went into the bout as the WBC's #1 ranked Welterweight. Yes, Dulorme was the #1 ranked Welterweight according to one of the 4 title awarding the bodies.

Going in to the bout many felt that Dulorme would, one day, go on to become a world champion though prior to this fight Dulorme's opponents were rather questionable with his stand out win coming over veteran DeMarcus Corley back in June 2011.

What didn't help Dulorme was not only his bizarre WBC ranking but competition which, Corley aside was very limited. In fact his previous 2 victories came over fighters who are now less than .500 (Yoryi Estrella 10-9-2, 7 and Alberto Herrera, now 8-8-1, 5) and whilst he had shown the ability to progress and build on his skills he was inexperienced and should never have been put in with a risky fighter like Abregu (who's only loss had come to Timothy Bradley).

Rather than looking at the matchmaking, which could be described as either "brave", "arrogant" or "foolish", too much I'm more interested in quite what the WBC were thinking to have Dulorme ahead of the likes of Selcuk Aydin (#4), Victor Ortiz (#9), Jan Zaveck (#29).

Also why do the WBC have the likes of Manny Pacquiao, Kell Brook, Mike Jones and Carson Jones listed as "unavailable"? Not a single one of those men currently has a title, and despite high rankings with other Organisations it makes no sense at all to ignore 4 of the top 10 fighters in the division. This goes with out mentioning the unranked Marcos Maidana who appears to be available for their rankings.

Equally odd is that the unranked (for "Medical" reasons) Andre Berto is scheduled to fight interim Champion Robert Guerrero next time out. The WBC really need to ask what they are doing to allow a fighter not ranked in their top 40 to fight for a world title. I understand Berto being given a ranking but they might as well have him in the rankings rather than sliding him in and forcing David Avanesyan (#40) out of the rankings just for a sake of a title fight.

We know that the rankings of various organisations need to be taken with a grain of salt but they could at least try to look genuine and at least try to shuffle things around in a way that makes sense! Trust me folks, this isn't the first time the WBC have had a ridiculous #1 ranked fighter!

For those interested, the WBC Welterweight top #15 as of October 1st was:
1-Thomas Dulorme (P. Rico)
2-Anton Novikov (Russia) CISBB
3-Selcuk Aydin (Turkey)
4-Ed Paredes (US) LATINO
5-Dennis Laurente (Phil)
6-Leonard Bundu (Sierra Leone) EBU
7-Antonin Decarie (Canada) INTL / NABF
8-Ionut Dan Ion (Romania/Canada)
9-Victor Ortiz (US)
10-Luis Carlos Abregu (Argentina)
11-Phil Lo Greco (Canada)
12-Jesse Vargas (US)
13-Patrick Allotey (Ghana) INTL SILVER
14-Josesito Lopez (US)
15-Shawn Porter (US)